Orville Reed King // [District Seven]

Orville is a goofy looking tween, lost somewhere between the adorable features of childhood and the definition of manhood. His hose is wide and flat, his eyes squint constantly, even in the dark, and his ears are two sizes too big. These are the awkward parts of Orville that are immediately obvious. The rest can, thankfully, be hidden. His arms droop down to the middle of his thighs, but with the right pattern of plaid, he doesn't look quite so much like a caveman. His legs refuse to stretch, to grow as they ought to, and they look like they belong to a dwarf. Most of his pale skin is covered in either freckles or birthmarks, making for a sort of red and chocolate connect-the-dots game.

Orville doesn't do a lot to correct this rather unflattering picture. His hair is cut only when it absolutely needs to be, and then it's hacked off with whatever sharp object is available, be that a razor, or a knife, or a shard of glass. He could wear clothing that fitted his growing form better, but then what would be the point? He hasn't yet hit his teenage grow spurt, but once that comes through, everything will have to be given away anyhow. Because if there's nothing else special about Orville, he is at least the very youngest of the chess siblings.

Orville is good, but Orville is strange. There's just no denying that this is a weird little boy (nowhere near adolescence, despite his age). He talks in circles sometimes, stutters others. People intimidate him. People took his brother and his sister-brother from him. People are dangerous. And yet, what would life be without them? An absent mother and equally fucked up siblings? Orville knows this and struggles with it. He has particular trouble putting his feelings into words.

Thus he talked abstractly, in metaphors that hardly anyone understands. Standard etiquette goes right over his head. Ask this boy "how are you?" and you're likely to get a full dose of it. Like a sheaf of bark from an oak, he might say. Or, as green as a blade of grass. This is how he organizing his world, into visuals and metaphors. Things that make sense in the abstract, that aren't able to be contained in flesh and blood and ashes.

He is an old soul, wise and somber beyond his age. There's a sadness particularly in his eyes, in the absence of a smile. For awhile, this made him the sad child, pitiful and intriguing. Now, it separates him from his peers. They don't know what to do with Orville, and because he is strange, he is outcast. He hasn't done anything to fix this, like his appearance. He's learned how to sit at his desk, how to queue up for a line, but all of the social grace one should learn in middle school has already passed him by. He remains alone at lunch, watching and gathering images to weave into the brief conversations he has with his remaining siblings. Most days, these are the only conversations he has. But can you really blame him, after watching two of his siblings march through the arena?

Reed has the distinction of being the youngest child in one of the strangest lots in District Seven. For a long time, that was his only marker. The baby, the last hodge podge of DNA from their always seeking mother. He wasn't the sharpest or the cutest or the most winning. In fact, he's lost sight of all those characteristics over the years. He's not the rock that holds the family together, but he is one point on the scale that thusfar has been untouchable. While Phoebe Alexander and Owen met their fates, Reed was far away, tucked into his blankets, too young to even consider revenge. But that's all about to change.

From the sidelines to the front lines, Reed is only just beginning to understand that death haunts the family that his mother made. He cannot deny it, cannot resent it, cannot best it. There is only acceptance. At eleven he finally approached Jason and asked what it would mean to be reaped. Except, he might have asked, "and if the sword comes for the little cub's neck, will the tiger save him?" He wasn't sure if Jason understood, but it wasn't long before they started looking for proper clothes for the Reaping, the best clothes Reed could ever hope to wear. He would be lined up, measured just like his sister and brother, and if the curse held, he'd be following their paths. Not to victory, but to a bloody death.

And what could he do to avert such a thing? Many nights he lay awake, wondering just that. He didn't know Phoebe very well before she left. He was too young to know anything about her person, just that she was his sister for awhile, and then his brother. He remembered even less of Alex, the true Alex, and no one would speak of him. Owen was a little brighter, the only sibling he resembled. He had a loyalty to him that Reed long admired. And it was Reed that Owen had called him, and thus Reed had stuck, even if in his own mind he thought of himself as Orville. Formal. Melancholy. Old. And then Owen left, taking the last of Reed's childhood with him. With only Jason and Ellie for company, Orville doesn't stand much of a chance of correcting his quirks. So he delves deeper into his books, finds more ways to describe his thoughts and feelings with "likes" and "as." Pretty soon, though, there won't be anyone else to listen to him.

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